


Forever and a Day

by Clare_Hope



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, merle and taako are good friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28587207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clare_Hope/pseuds/Clare_Hope
Summary: Nearing the third anniversary of Julia's death, Magnus finds himself having a very bad day. Supportive friends and some self-reflection help him move forward.
Relationships: Julia Burnsides/Magnus Burnsides, Magnus Burnsides & Merle Highchurch & Taako
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	Forever and a Day

**Author's Note:**

> Hallo hallo waelcome to mai caeve (of projecting onto Magnus Burnsides). He's sad. I'm sad. Is there anything more to say?
> 
> (Content warnings for death of a loved one/the grieving process.)

Sometimes, Magnus wasn't sure which was worse: the nightmares, or the dreams where Julia was still alive. The dreams were never exactly the same, but they had similar elements. He would see her, or someone would tell him where to find her, and sometimes he could hardly believe it but he would always go to her and there she would be. Whole, alive, smiling at him. And he was suitably happy, never questioning too hard how she was there (except the times when he did, when he convinced himself in his own dream that he had gone crazy and begged everyone else to confirm that what he was seeing was true--the dream turned into a nightmare then, but that didn't happen often). And he would always hug her. He would bury his face in her shoulder and tell her how much he had missed her, and she would say how glad she was to see him, and then the dream would go on in the ways that dreams did, unconstrained by time or reality.

But of course, he would always wake up.

And it didn't hurt like it did on the day he lost her, but it did hurt. It was a punch in the gut, a tear to the scar tissue on his wounded soul. The dreams sometimes left him a little dazed. He would long to escape back into the dream, and everything else would seem dull and not worth paying attention to. Words were thick and heavy on his tongue. He didn't have much energy.

He had woken up from one of those dreams early this morning and couldn't bear to try going back to sleep. Magnus got up, keeping a blanket haphazardly around his shoulders, and went to sit on the couch. A block of wood was in one hand and a knife was in the other. He didn't remember picking them up. The knife peeled strip after strip off the piece of wood, whittling it down without bothering to shape it into anything. Magnus stared into space as he carved.

"Magnus?"

"Hm?"

Merle was approaching the couch. "Hey, Mags. You look out of it. Are you okay?"

Magnus shook his head slowly.

"How can I help?"

"Tell…" The words weren't coming easily. His throat hurt. He always felt like he was right on the verge of crying on days like this. "Tell Carey I can't come train this morning?"

"Yeah, okay, buddy." Merle touched his knee gently with his wooden hand. "Do you wanna tell me what's goin' on?"

He shook his head again.

"Gotcha. No pressure. I'll go find Carey and let her know. Be back in a few," Merle said. He patted Magnus's knee again and left the room.

Magnus went back to taking methodical shavings off the rapidly shrinking block of wood.

"There's not gonna be much left of that wood if you keep going like that," Taako observed. He was standing at the door between his bedroom and the common space. Though his words were casual, his voice sounded gentler than Magnus was used to.

"'m not trying to make anything with it," Magnus replied.

"Figured. Do you want to be alone?" Taako asked bluntly.

That question stumped him for a moment.  _ Did _ he want to be alone?  _ Not really _ . "No," he said.

"Okay." Taako came and sat down on the floor in front of Magnus. He carefully swept the wood shavings into a neat pile.

"Thanks," Magnus whispered.

"Mm-hmm."

The lump in his throat grew as the block of wood continued to get smaller. Eventually, there wasn't anything left of the wood to carve. He dropped it onto the ground into the pile, fiddled with the knife for a moment, and then closed it and put it in his pocket. Magnus stared at his empty hands. His wedding ring glinted in the dim light before it was obscured by tears.

"Carey says not to worry about it," Merle said, walking back into the room. "She--oh. Oh, hey, Magnus, what…?"

Taako finished cleaning up the wood scraps and stood up. "I don't think he's really up for talking about it," he told Merle quietly.

"Yeah, I know. Maggi, you want company?" Merle offered.

Magnus's tears fell onto his hands as he nodded. He felt his friends sit down on either side of him.

"The world is  _ rough _ , huh?" Taako said after a minute.

A quiet sob escaped him.

"Yeah," affirmed Taako. "Yeah, it is."

Merle put his hand on Magnus's arm. "We're here."

He had never been more grateful for his friends, and especially for them not trying to be funny or mean-spirited or anything other than supportive and understanding. Magnus hadn't told them about Julia before. It was too painful to talk about her at all. They must have figured out the basics, of course--they couldn't have  _ not _ noticed his ring. And they had heard him ask that Kravitz guy to give her a message, and they had wanted him to explain. But they hadn't pushed, and he was just so grateful.

"How about some tea?" Merle suggested.

That...sounded nice, actually. Magnus nodded and wiped at his eyes.

"I'll make some tea." Merle seemed less than comfortable sitting and doing nothing while Magnus was crying. Magnus didn't blame him. He was a little surprised that Taako seemed to be handling the situation with more ease than the actual cleric, though.

"Your blanket is slipping. Do you actually want it around you?" asked Taako.

It might have just been in his head, but Magnus felt like he couldn't get warm. He nodded again.

Taako pulled the blanket higher around his shoulders, making sure it wasn't going to fall again. He left his hand on Magnus's back. "You cold?"

"I don't know."

"Let's go with yes," Taako decided. He warmed the blanket up with some sort of magic so it felt like it had just come out of the dryer. It felt so comforting that Magnus's heart actually ached for a moment. "That should help."

Magnus couldn't even get a  _ thank you _ out through the little sobs that gripped him.

Merle returned soon, and though Magnus wasn't ready to drink the tea in the mug which was carefully placed in his hands, it was helpful to have something to hold onto. Even the scent was grounding.

His tears dried up after a few more minutes of crying. And Merle and Taako sat with him through all of it, their hands on his arms or back. Magnus lost himself in the rhythm of his own breathing as it steadied. He came back to reality when he realized that the tea he was holding wasn't even warm anymore. "Oh," he said, disappointed. He looked down at the mug.

Without a word, Taako took it from him. He held it briefly and then gave it back, fresh steam rising from the surface of the fragrant liquid. Magnus could have cried again at how thoughtful Taako was being.

The tea tasted even better than it smelled. It was just the right temperature--not quite so hot that he couldn't sip at it, but hot enough that he could feel its soothing warmth in his throat.

"Feeling any better?" asked Merle.

"Not really," Magnus said honestly. "I...I'm not gonna feel better for a while. Thanks, guys. Seriously, thanks, I just...I don't want you wasting your whole day sitting with me while I…"

"Who's wasting anything?" Taako scoffed. "An excuse to sit around all day is exactly what I'm always looking for."

Magnus surprised himself by laughing. "That's...that's fair. But really, you don't have to--"

"Shut up," Merle suggested.

"Oh?"

"We're not gonna go anywhere, so you can stop trying to make us." Merle crossed his arms stubbornly.

Sniffling, Magnus nodded. "Okay, yeah, I'll...thanks."

"And stop thanking us," Taako advised. "Or I'll start thinking I'm doing something  _ nice _ , and that just doesn't sound like me at all, does it?"

Magnus couldn't help it. He reached out and hugged Taako, needing to convey to his friend how grateful he was and how much he knew that wasn't true.

"Oof, okay, buddy. Yeah, you don't need to crush me." Taako patted his back delicately. "I know you're having a rough day but I don't exactly give very good hugs, so maybe--"

"That's not  _ true _ ," Magnus stated. "Shut up and hug me. Merle, you're next."

"I will not run out of the room in a panic if you promise not to suffocate me," replied Merle.

Eventually, Magnus released Taako and turned to hug Merle. Merle stood up on the couch to better reach him. Despite his apparent hesitation, Merle hugged him back tightly and rubbed his hand across his shoulders.

Magnus felt less like his head was in a cloud now. He let go of Merle and sat back against the couch.  _ I'm not going to cry again _ , he told himself. "Hey, guys? Um, I just want you to know, I…"

"He's going to get even sappier," mumbled Taako. "Great."

"Yes, I am, and you know what? You're gonna--" His voice wobbled. "You're gonna deal with it, because you have no idea...you two have been...I was in a really, really bad place before I met you, and I'm still dealing with all of that now, but you've been…"  _ Okay, maybe I am going to cry again. _

"Yeah, we get it, Mags, we get it," said Taako, more gently than his words implied. "I, uh, I've got some idea. You're not the only one who...well, anyway. You don't have to explain yourself." 

"I know, I just…"

"Can I ask something, actually?" Merle said, settling back down on the couch.

"Yeah," Magnus replied cautiously.

"Do you know what made this such a bad day? I mean, did something happen that we might be able to watch out for and help with in the future?" he asked.

"I--" Magnus broke off.

Of course.

It had been almost three years since Julia had been killed.  _ Exactly _ three years, in fact, since Magnus had left town. Since he had last seen his wife. It wasn't that he had forgotten, he just...tried not to think about it like that. Still, somewhere in his subconscious, he must have been dwelling on it.

His head spun. Physical dizziness washed over him as a few silent tears slipped down his cheeks. He put his face in his hands wearily.

Merle touched his arm. "Magnus?"

"Sorry," Magnus whispered. He could hardly speak.

"Didn't mean to upset ya," Merle said quietly. "You don't have to talk about it."

Though he tried to nod, he couldn't seem to move without making the dizziness worse. He tried to remember to breathe. Had he been forgetting?

Grounding pressure on the back of his neck. A whisper he couldn't quite make out. The blanket being tugged up around his shoulders once again. Magnus tried to focus on anything but his own whirl of blurry memories and unhappiness.

"Deep breath, Maggi," Merle stated. "You can't go slipping off into the past right now."

"I wish I could," he said involuntarily. Sometimes the past seemed so tangible that he could almost reach out and take hold of it again. It seemed like it should be as easy to go back as stepping from one room to another. He could just about taste it, light and sweet as summer before the bitterness had stolen in. If he closed his eyes, it was so easy to picture, to see her face, to imagine giving up this whole world for another moment where she was alive. He would. He would give anything, for just another moment.

"But you can't," Taako said bluntly. "Magnus, don't torture yourself like that."

"I…"

"Don't be afraid to slip into the future instead," Merle added.

"I don't want the future, though," Magnus said. "I want--" His voice broke. "I want  _ her _ ."

If he had stayed.

"Magnus, it's okay to be sad."

If he had dealt with Kalen once and for all before anything else happened.

"But it's okay to not let yourself drown in the sadness, too."

If he had asked her to come on the road with him.

So many ways it could have been different. So many times in which he could have been happy. Why did he have to be stuck in this one?

"Just take another breath."

He took another breath. He never really found it helpful to imagine what Julia would have wanted--she would have  _ wanted _ to be alive, to not have been killed under a falling stone support beam in an explosion caused by a bitter, evil man. But just this once, he indulged himself and wondered if she would have wanted him to crave the past so much. Maybe she would rather he look to the future, to try to find meaning and happiness in the years before he saw her again instead of trying to shorten those years by taking the biggest hits, the longest falls.

His hands were wet with his own tears by now. He lowered them shakily. Taako handed him a handkerchief and he wiped his eyes.

"I'm tired," he murmured. It felt like he didn't have any energy left in his limbs. Breathing was an effort.

"Maybe you should lie down for a bit," said Taako.

"Yeah." He couldn't really sit upright anymore, anyway. Unsure how he got there, Magnus found himself with his head on a pillow at one end of the couch and his feet tucked up at the other. Taako was perched on the arm of the chair near his head, and Merle was covering him with a second blanket. “Thanks, guys,” he whispered.

Taako’s hand brushed over his hair. “Yeah, no prob, Mags.”

“Shit’s exhausting, you deserve a rest,” Merle added.

Magnus almost nodded. He didn’t quite have the energy, though, so he just fell asleep instead. 

This time, when he saw Julia’s face in his dreams, she just smiled at him and blew a kiss. Then she walked away. “I’ll be seeing you,” she said.

“Promise you’ll wait for me?” Magnus called after her.

“Forever and a day,” she replied. “Or as long as it takes.”

Magnus smiled. “Love you, Jules.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment if you're so inclined. I hope you are all doing well.
> 
> It's gonna be okay. <3


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